1994 The Year That Should’ve Been

A bitter and vastly unpopular player strike shuts down the season in August—bringing an early, cruel end to the wonderful campaigns of Tony Gwynn, Matt Williams, the Cleveland Indians and Montreal Expos. Worst of all: The World Series is canceled for the first time in 90 years.

Imagine a single, magical baseball season in which Ted Williams hits .406, Roger Maris clubs 61 home runs, and the Miracle Mets of New York win the World Series.

Now imagine if that season is killed off halfway through, stripped of the Fall Classic and all its grand achievements—to be forever lost in the tomb of unknown milestones.

Welcome to 1994.

For over two decades, baseball fans had grown used to the occasional work stoppage, like powerless villagers enduring chronic border skirmishes between two neighboring, warring countries. In instances like 1981, when a sizeable chunk of the season got chewed away by a player strike, the labor conflict had flared into all-out war.

In 1994, it would be Armageddon.

On the field, baseball was on the threshold of a great era. Flashy superstars such as Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas, Barry Bonds and Jeff Bagwell were electrifying fans. Attendance was booming. Beautiful new ballparks were opening. Offense wasn’t merely on the rise; it was exploding, with long-standing records in danger of falling. And barring injury, Cal Ripken Jr. was now just a year away from replacing Lou Gehrig as the man who played the most consecutive games in history.

But off the field, there was trouble in paradise. Player salaries continued their skyrocketing pace. The lavish television deal with CBS was coming to an end with nothing comparable in sight to feed the kitty. The gap between rich team, poor team was widening like never before.

And a new labor agreement needed to be negotiated.

Major league owners had grown as mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore. They had basically gotten the short end of the stick in every labor battle against the players’ union since Marvin Miller brought it to prominence. The owners often had themselves to blame, their unity frequently crumbling while player solidarity remained remarkably airtight. Baseball’s commissioners were often no help, butting in and settling a strike for the good of the game and their image—but seldom in the Lords’ best interests.

The owners quickly solved one problem by neutering the duties of the commissioner into a man of no importance, a powerless figurehead who couldn’t nose in on labor negotiations. (That “interim” commissioner Bud Selig was an owner himself made the issue, in the interim, a moot one.) Solving their second problem—dealing with one another on labor strategies—only served to reinforce the fleeting state of owner solidarity. For over a year the owners fought amongst each other over the idea of revenue sharing, with the haves and have-nots taking opposite sides of the issue. They finally hammered something out, albeit reluctantly, in early 1994.

The easy part was done; now the owners had to present their revenue sharing plan—one that would be tied to slightly lower free agent eligibility, the elimination of salary arbitration and, most boldly, the introduction of a salary cap—to the players’ union as negotiations began on a new labor agreement.

Now in charge of the union was 44-year-old Donald Fehr, whose baby-faced, ashen façade seemed incapable of displaying a sense of humor—though when he was handed the owners’ proposal in June 1994, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry foul. The salary cap, in particular, was fighting words to Fehr and the players; they had seen what a cap had done for the NBA and NFL and wanted no part of it. The union tossed the owners’ proposal into the trash as if it was junk mail.

Progress was not a buzzword as negotiations struggled on. Plain and simple, the owners were adamant on a salary cap; the union was equally opposed. Neither side made things easy away from the bargaining table. The players decided to set a strike date of August 12—much earlier than expected—leaving little time for what little chance there was for compromise. The owners responded by withdrawing a scheduled $7.8 million payment to the players’ pension fund, which served little purpose except to tick the union off.

Late on a cool Oakland evening on August 11, the A’s Ernie Young went after a high fastball from Seattle’s Randy Johnson and missed. It was the final pitch of the Mariners’ 8-1 victory.

And it was the last pitch thrown in 1994.

The players made good on their threat and began striking the next day. Baseball’s evolving, dreamlike season on the field had been overrun by the nightmare taking place off it. That any season would be canceled was shameful enough; that it had to be this one, with an endless menu of astounding individual feats and sentimental team favorites on the rise, was almost unpardonable.

Tony Gwynn, the San Diego Padres’ perennial .300 hitter and then some, was making a serious run at .400. He was batting .394 when the games stopped on August 12, but he hit .439 over his last 14 games and, as he would later recall, “Everything was rolling.” Gwynn might have been baseball’s first .400 hitter in 53 years. We’ll never know.

The year’s top baseball stories, between the lines, were not limited to the singular exploits of superstars. A number of long-suffering teams were capturing the imagination of baseball fans, old and new alike.

The Cleveland Indians had won nothing since 1954. Nothing. In the past 29 years, they had recorded only four finishes above the .500 mark—and in each case, barely. Sports Illustrated suffered a delusional epiphany in 1987 and predicted the Indians would reach the World Series. The Tribe lost 101 games instead. The idea of a Cleveland pennant was reduced to comical Hollywood fantasy, recalled in the 1989 movie Major League.

After years of throwing away promising talent through bad trades or now-or-never gambles that failed, the Indians wisely built themselves back on their feet and became a potential powerhouse on the rise—just in time to escape aging, monstrous Cleveland Stadium for downtown and cozy, modern Jacobs Field. There was newfound excitement at “The Jake,” and it wasn’t just urban renewal; the Indians’ winning surge was just as responsible for packing them in. The Tribe’s impressive roster included peak performers in Albert Belle and Kenny Lofton, rising talents in Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez, and over-the-hill stars Eddie Murray, Dennis Martinez and Jack Morris, each of whom had plenty of gas left in their tank.

Cleveland won early and often and engaged in a two-way battle with the White Sox within the American League’s newly-formed Central Division. Though the season ended short with the Indians trailing the Sox by a single game, they held solid command of the AL Wild Card spot—another new invention for 1994. Silenced from postseason play ever since Willie Mays caught up to Vic Wertz’s monster drive 40 years earlier, the Indians had a chance to finally sound off in October. We’ll never know.

There was also excitement north of the border in Montreal, where the low-budget Expos were defying the modern-day convention of baseball economics and running away with the majors’ best record at 74-40. The game’s most inexpensive roster was also its youngest—all but a few Expos were over 30—and featured a who’s who of current and, mostly, future stars: Larry Walker, Pedro Martinez, Moises Alou, Marquis Grissom, Ken Hill, Jeff Fassero, John Wetteland and Jeff Shaw.

The strike saved baseball from a few embarrassments in the realigned—and depleted—four-team AL West. The Texas Rangers, at 52-62, led the division on the day the players walked. And the Mariners, a few games back, were spared the indignity of playing the final two months on the road after falling ceiling tiles inside the Kingdome had rendered the facility indefinitely unsafe.

As August wandered into September with no hope of a settlement in sight, the owners—led by Bud Selig—decided on September 9 to pull the plug on the 1994 season, rationalizing that any deal struck afterward would have come too late to salvage the campaign. Twenty-five other owners agreed. Two did not: Cincinnati’s Marge Schott, because, among other reasons, her Reds were leading the NL CentralAs in 1981, the first-place Reds were jobbed by a strike that cost them a chance to play in the postseason.; and Baltimore’s Peter Angelos, not only because he was losing abundant Camden Yards revenue, but because the strike was impeding on Cal Ripken’s bid to break Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games mark.

Selig’s decision wasn’t so much a backbreaker as it was a formality. There was no chance that baseball would resume anytime soon. As the two negotiating sides stood militant against one another—even the owners, fiercely determined not to lose this labor war, were sticking together for a change—the acrimony was at an all-time high. The fans mounted the usual pitchfork rebellion to get the warring sides’ attention, but the expected deaf ear was turned; there was just too much money and honor at stake to give the fans’ wrath the time of day.

The World Series had been played for 90 straight years, through high times and lean times, through scandal, catastrophe and world war. But for the first time since John McGraw and John Brush told the infant American League to get lost in 1904, the Fall Classic was going to be thrown away by more trivial obstacles such as greed and mistrust.

Some sense was knocked into the owners at year’s end when they replaced their chief negotiator, Richard Ratvich—whose relationship with Don Fehr was incendiary at best—with two owners fielding less combative personalities: John Herrington of the Boston Red Sox and Jerry McMorris of the Colorado Rockies. Some calm had returned to the negotiating table, but the owners were still adamant: No settlement without some kind of cap on player salaries. If the union continued to say no, the owners were ready to declare an impasse and implement their own labor rules, regardless of what the union had to say.

Armageddon had come, the world of baseball had blown itself up many times over, and nuclear winter was at hand; 1994 was dead.

The question now became: Could 1995 be saved?

Forward to 1995:Thanks to Cal, Hideo—and Sonia, Too Numerous feel-good moments rescue baseball from its most devastating work stoppage.

Back to 1993:The Last Great Pennant Race On the eve of the wild card era, 100-game winners San Francisco and Atlanta fight it out for a single postseason spot.

The 1990s Page:To Hell and Back Relations between players and owners continue to deteriorate, bottoming out with a devastating mid-decade strike—souring relations with fans who, in some cases, turn their backs on the game for good. Recovery is made possible thanks to a series of popular record-breaking achievements by "class act" stars.

Hit Like Mike Less than six months after stunning the basketball world with his retirement from the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan decides he wants to take up baseball. The Chicago White Sox—owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, who also runs the Bulls—gives Jordan a shot. He plays with the parent club for most of spring training, but spends the regular season with the Class-AA Birmingham Barons, where he’ll hit .202 with three homers, 51 runs batted in and 30 steals. Discouraged that his prospects are being tied up by the continuing major league strike, Jordan will end the baseball experiment early in 1995, soon to resume life winning NBA titles for the Bulls.

Maybe He’ll Try Out for the BullsLike Jordan before him, Ryne Sandberg—an All-Star fan favorite at second base for over 12 years with the Chicago Cubs—announces his sudden retirement on June 13. Unlike Jordan, the 34-year-old Sandberg is no longer at the peak of his game; his slugging abilities had left him in 1993 (nine homers in 117 games) and now he has trouble hitting, period—batting just .238 through the first 57 games of 1994. Sandberg could stick around and make $16 million in guaranteed income, but he says, in essence, that he doesn’t have it anymore. He changes his mind in 1996, returning to the Cubs and rediscovering some of his offensive game—but is still far from vintage form. He’ll announce a second and more permanent retirement in 1997.

Strawberry Jam and Doctor ToastDarryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden, the two wunderkinds of the New York Mets during the 1980s, crash their careers in 1994 under the weight of substance abuse, among other sad matters. Strawberry, entering his fourth year with the Los Angeles Dodgers, enters the Betty Ford Clinic to battle alcoholism, and Gooden follows him a few months later. Neither player fully recovers; Strawberry, unceremoniously released by the Dodgers and later given a shot by the San Francisco Giants, will be given a six-month jail sentence on another matter: Tax evasion. Gooden, meanwhile, will relapse into cocaine addiction and, as a result, will be suspended from baseball for all of 1995. The New York Yankees will sign both players in 1996 as sentimental reclamation projects.

The Case of the Vanishing Bat Albert Belle of the Cleveland Indians has his bat confiscated for possible cork during a July 14 game at Chicago against the White Sox—but the bat, locked away later in the umpires’ dressing room, suddenly vanishes, replaced with a different bat. Umpires are neither blind nor amused to the incident and ask for Belle’s bat back—which, indeed, turns up positive for cork. Belle is ultimately handed a six-game suspension. Five years later the truth is uncovered; then-Indians pitcher Jason Grimsley confesses that he used the crawlspace at New Comiskey Park to enter the umpires’ locker room, and replaced Belle’s bat with one used by teammate Paul Sorrento.

Perfect Game, Perfect Shame Kenny Rogers of the Texas Rangers throws baseball’s fifth perfect game in just 14 years when he silences the California Angels, 4-0, at Arlington on July 28. Former Rangers pitcher Bobby Witt, now playing for the Oakland A’s, has his bid for a perfecto robbed in the sixth inning when Kansas City’s Greg Gagne is declared safe at first on an infield ground ball—a play disputed by television replays, which show the throw beating Gagne to the bag. It’s Witt’s only blemish in the A’s 4-0 win on June 23.

When the Tuff Gets Going…Karl “Tuffy” Rhodes of the Chicago Cubs hits solo home runs in each of his first three at-bats of the season, April 4 against Dwight Gooden and the Mets at Wrigley Field. Rhodes’ homers—which do not help the Cubs in a 12-8 loss—represent three of eight he will hit for the season, and 13 over a six-year career spent mostly on the bench. Rhodes will discover a more potent second baseball life in Japan, tying Sadaharu Oh’s season home run record of 55 in 2001.

D-Lew’s Rare Boo-BooThe Giants’ Darren Lewis, after 392 games of defensive perfection in the outfield, makes the first error of his career on June 30 at San Francisco against Montreal. Lewis had established the major league record for most consecutive games without an error by an outfielder. His misplay doesn’t lead to any unearned runs in the Giants’ 7-3 loss to the Expos. Nick Markakis will break the mark in 2015.

The Ballpark at Arlington, Arlington, Texas After spending their first two decades in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex at Arlington Stadium—a nondescript, overgrown minor-league facility—the Texas Rangers make a quantum leap by moving nearby into the sparkling and garish Ballpark at Arlington.

Enthusiastically supported by the citizens of Arlington—they voted 2-to-1 to fund two-thirds of the ballpark’s $190 million cost in 1991—the five-level ballpark (luxury box tiers included) is awash in Texan architectural motifs (from lone stars to steer heads). It also hosts a 17,000-square foot museum, a T.G.I. Friday’s restaurant, and features a two-tiered right field bleacher structure modeled after Detroit’s Tiger Stadium. Most unique is the four-story office building behind center field that encloses the facility—the tenants of which can stay late at work and watch a ballgame all at the same time.

The Rangers will initially thrive at the Ballpark at Arlington, winning three AL West titles in their first five years at the facility—but they’ve also been prone to being victimized by its offensive-friendly dimensions, which can exhaust a pitching staff.

Jacobs Field, Cleveland
The ruling cliché of the 1990s was “build it and they will come.” And come they certainly did to “The Jake,” the beacon of a massive, glorious revitalization that filled the cavity of a once rotted-out Cleveland, heretofore known for bankruptcy and rivers that caught fire.

Jacobs Field pays architectural tribute to the city’s past with latticed white steelwork that evokes city bridges over the Cuyahoga, and toothbrush-shaped light standards that tower above the upper decks like smokestacks. The Jake’s asymmetrical field is surrounded by asymmetrical seating, most notably within its second level—a jumbled mix of standard seating, multiple luxury box tiers and a series of jagged, cascading sections angled toward home plate. There’s also a miniature, 19-foot Green Monster for a left-field fence, a four-tiered picnic area behind right-center, and field-level suites openly wedged between both dugouts.

The ballpark’s presence, coupled with the Indians’ success on the field, initially made empty seats a rare sight; for 455 straight home games between 1995 and 2001, not one Jacobs Field seat went unsold. Needless to say, the Jake’s atmosphere and success is a major turnabout from the Tribe’s dark, dreary days at derelict Municipal Stadium. Renamed Progressive Field in 2008.

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